Conference Agenda

In this presentation entitled Women try, men die: Cultural scripts of bad and good suicides I use suicide-scripts theory (Canetto, 1997, 2021) to make sense of what I have called the gender paradox of suicide (Canetto & Sakinofsky, 1998), that is, the fact that in many communities females have lower mortality by suicide despite their higher rates of suicidal behavior, relative to males. This pattern is a paradox because higher engagement in a life-threatening behavior is usually associated with higher rates of both morbidity and mortality from that behavior. The gender paradox of suicide pattern suggests the presence of gendered scripts of suicidality. My research has documented that in cultures where women are more likely to “attempt” and “fail” at suicide, and men to die of suicide, “attempted” and “failed” suicide is viewed as juvenile, weak, cowardly, crazy, feminine behavior, and death by suicide as more wrong when it involves women than when it involves men. In these cultures, “completed,” "successful" suicide may be considered a tragic death but also a relatively strong and understandable masculine act—a potentially good suicide. The association of “attempted suicide” with femininity may enable nonfatal suicidal behavior in women while the stigma of female suicide may be a deterrent for women to end their life. By contrast, the association of “attempted suicide” with femininity, and of suicide with masculinity may force males into avoiding suicidal behavior unless they are ready to die of the suicidal act. In conclusion, the cultural availability of good scripts of male suicide and only bad scripts of female suicide may contribute to men having higher suicide mortality than women.